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11/19/2024
“The Eye is the First Circle”
Simone Dinnerstein: The Eye is the First Circle
Charles Ives: Piano Sonata n° 2 (“Concord”)
Simone Dinnerstein (piano)
Recording: Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey (October 17, 2021) – 45’45
Supertrain Records – Booklet in English
The American pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s 14th album, “The Eye is the First Circle”, is both traditional and revolutionary, musically trailblazing and philosophically reflective. The title comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Circles, which explores the phenomenon of circles in life, perhaps as the building blocks of life itself. Think of circles, sometimes stretched into ovals, in our lives: the swirl of atoms, planets, stars; the waves sent out from a pebble cast into a pond; the wheel on which grain is crushed into flour; a diamond in a ring; the ring itself. The eye is the first circle because it is the primordial lens through which we see our circle‑encrusted world.
Why did the pianist give this album such a puzzling philosophical moniker? The album consists of one single work, the Sonata n° 2 (“Concord”) by Charles Ives (1874‑1954). Why not title the album simply with an immediately recognizable name? After all, the work is a 20th century masterpiece, but still not that well known to many lovers of classical music. Further exploration provides clues. The notion of circles appeals to Dinnerstein as it did to Emerson, the mid‑19th century New England poet and opinion maker who, not coincidentally, is the subject of the sonata’s first movement.
As we play with the pieces in this puzzle, they start to fall into place. Circles suggest continuity, completion, eternity (a diamond is forever). The idea of circles denotes things coming round, the seasons, knowing that things will get done. Dinnerstein recognizes the circularity of life in its cycles of birth (her son, Adrian) and death (her longtime producer, Adam Abeshouse, who passed away this fall just days before the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Ives). Yeats said that things fall apart, but they also spiral back together. Change ironically emerges as the one constant polestar around which our fragile lives spin.
Dinnerstein is one of our most innovative and adventurous musicians, championing the piano music of Philip Glass and creating an original, even sensational vision of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I think the context for this new album must have grown out of her reflections during the pandemic. It was a time of despair intertwined with uneasy hope, when many artists asked themselves, “Is what I am doing relevant to a world possibly on the brink of annihilation?” Fortunately for us, the wisdom of the New England Transcendentalists encoded in this sonata provided and continues to provide a mirror in which we can watch uncertainty melt into conviction.
Emerson was the grand sire of the New England Transcendentalists, a group of authors, poets, and philosophers opposed to slavery and champions of universal education. The Sonata captures the independent yet stalwart presence of the intellectual patriarch. The second movement is named for Nathaniel Hawthorne, while the third is for the entire Alcott family (Bronson, reformer, Abigail, social worker, and their daughters, Anna, Louisa (author of Little Women), Elizabeth, and Abby May. The fourth and most translucent movement belongs to Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden. Listeners to wav files online may find the waveform images of each cut reminiscent of the personality of each character (Emerson authoritative and dramatic, Thoreau as silence and elusive as the subject of his poem, “Smoke.”)
This being Ives, there is plenty of dissonance, the absence of a time signature, and a paucity of bar lines throughout the sonata. Whispers of Beethoven’s Fifth haunt the score, as well as hints of songs (e.g., “Autumn in New York”, “How Great Thou Art”). These are opportunities rather than obstacles for Dinnerstein, as she absorbs the music, half‑creating it herself, and releasing it in a halo of meaning. Of the several performances of this work with which I’m familiar, Dinnerstein’s has the most dramatic punch, with a touch both powerful and indescribably light. Any listener who finds Ives’s music intellectually satisfying, but not an object of pure beauty, needs to hear this recording in all its shining splendor.
For its performance at Montclair State University, the Sonata was packaged with other cultural artifacts in a multi‑media production, similar to a “happening” as we called them decades ago. Also named, The Eye is the First Circle, the production was subsequently performed in two other venues. The multi‑media aspects not visible in the recording include lighting effects and a painting by the pianist’s father, Simon Dinnerstein. The latter work, The Fulbright Triptych, depicts Simone as an infant with her parents and an array of creative materials. This is not a mere “homage to dad,” but an important 20th century artwork referred to as “amazing” and “fascinating” by The New York Times critic Roberta Smith.
While it is interesting to read about the multi-media production, for our purposes, the album stands squarely on its own considerable and exclusively musical merits. What a pleasure to listen to this musician share with us her artistry and her own reading of Ives’s vision. This recording opened up new vistas in musical understanding for me, and it just might do the same for you.
Linda Holt
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